
Class _J^^03 



Book. 






PAPERS OF MAJOR-GEN. NATHANAEL GREENE. 1 59 



^'PVv^ 




THE PAPERS OF MAJOR-GEN. NATHANAEL 
GREENE. 



The recent effort on the part of the Historical Society to 
have a portion of the papers of Major-General Greene secured 
to the State of his nativity, has given rise to the thought 
that an account of the manuscripts left by him may be of 
interest to the readers of the society's publications. 

General Greene preserved his papers with great care. One 
reason was, that his intimate friend. President Joseph Reed 
of Pennsylvania, formerly adjutant-general to General Wash- 
ington, contemplating a history of the Revolutionary War, 
asked General Greene to preserve for him everything that 
could be of assistance to him in that project. The general 
did so. There is also evidence that he intended to publish 
some account of his own military career. In a letter to John 
Adams, dated January 28, 1781, he says: "The American ar- 
mies have gained some advantage ; my public letters will 
have given you some idea of them, but the previous measures 
which led to important events, and my reasons for those mea- 
sures, must lie in the dark until a more leisure hour."* The 
papers which he preserved Were consulted by two contempo- 
rary historians of the Revolution, Gordon and Ramsay, though 
Reed did not live to carry out his design. Gordon consulted 
them at Newport, and afterward addressed many inquiries to 
General Greene, which were evidently to be answered by 
means of these papers. f Ramsay took notes from General 
Greene's manuscripts.:): The papers which Greene retained 

♦Johnson's Greene, Vol. I., pp. v., vi. 

fLetters of Gordon, in Greene's Greene, Vol. II., pp. 417, 418; and in 
Hist. Magazine, Vol. XIII, pp. 24, 25. 
ILetter of Ramsay in Hist. Magazine, Vol. XIII., p. 26. 



h ^ 



J 



l60 RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

in his own hands were those of his private correspondence, as 
distinguished from the official papers of the Southern Depart- 
ment during the period while he was in command. The 
letters were, at the disbanding of the Continental Army, 
entrusted to the care of Major Edward Rutledge. On his 
death they passed into the hands of his son, Henry Rutledge. 
When Henry Rutledge left South Carolina to live in Ten- 
nessee, he left these papers in the charge of General Charles 
Cotesworth Pinckney of Charleston.* 

General Greene, dying in Georgia in 1786, left a widow and 
five children. His widow married Phinehas Miller, and died 
in 1814. His eldest son, George Washington Greene, died 
unmarried in 1794. His eldest daughter, Martha Washing- 
ton Greene, married first John C. Nightingale, and afterward 
Dr. Henry Turner, with whom she lived in Tennessee. The 
second daughter, Cornelia Lott, married first Peyton Skip- 
with, and afterward Edward B. Littlefield, and also went to 
live in Tennessee. The next child, a son, Nathanael Ray 
Greene, lived in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. The young- 
est daughter, Louisa Catherine, a posthumous child, married 
James Shaw and lived on Cumberland Island, Georgia. When 
Justice William Johnson, of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, began to occupy himself with the life of General 
Greene, the private papers of the general were in the posses- 
sion of this youngest daughter, Mrs. Shaw.f 

"Some years since," says Justice Johnson in the preface 
to his 'Sketches of General Greene,' " I was consulted by 
Mrs. Shaw, the youngest daughter and administratrix of Gen- 
eral Greene, on the manner in which she should dispose of 
her father's original papers. Until that time I had never un- 
derstood that they had been preserved. For the first time I 
learnt that they had been carefully husbanded, and never yet 
submitted to the examination of any one, with a view either 
to add to the materials of general history or furnish those of 
a biography of the great man who had bequeathed them to 
posterity. Nor had I, until then, been struck with the fact that 

*Johnson, Vol. I., p. v. 
•f-Johnson, V^ol. IL, pp. 462, 463. 



PAPERS OF MAJOR-GEN. NATHANAEL GREENE. l6l 

his biography had never been attempted, nor his name even 
mentioned in the cyclopaedias of the day. I therefore sug- 
gested to Mrs. Shaw that, if she approved of my undertaking 
the biography of her father, I would take the papers under 
my care, and examine how far they afforded the necessary 
materials for such an undertaking. The proposal was readily 
assented to, and she soon after forwarded to me a large col- 
lection of letters containing his private correspondence ; and 
addressed a letter to Gen. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, re- 
questing him to deliver me the trunk containing the official 
papers of the Southern Department, whilst General Greene 
was in command. The latter were immediately delivered up 
to me, and I found them in the highest state of preservation 
and arrangement These two collections of pa- 
pers, consisting of several thousand, had obviously been pre- 
served with great care, and the motive became explained in 
the course of examining them."* 

Incidentally, Judge Johnson mentions that all Greene's 
letters were written by himself, so that these collections of 
papers were a collection of autographic memorials of him.f 

Beside these papers derived from the descendants of his 
hero, the biographer describes other manuscript materials for 
his work. In 1818 he visited Rhode Island, and during the 
summer explored the private cabinets of the general's friends 
in the northern and eastern States. $ "I found," he says, "that 
the general's early correspondence had been religiously pre- 
served, and that various small collections of historical materials 
had been made, which were now liberally communicated to me, 
to aid in a work in the promotion of which every one manifested 
an individual interest." He mentions such obligations to 
Governor Gibbs of Rhode Island ; his brother, Colonel Gibbs 
of Long Island ; the surviving brothers and nephews of Gen- 
eral Greene ; his early friends. Colonel Ward and General 
Varnum ; Judge Pendleton of New York, who had made 

*Johnson, Vol. I., p. v. 
tJohnson, Vol. II., p. 458. 
J Johnson, Vol. I., pp. vi.-ix. 



l62 RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

preparation for writing a biography ;* Joseph Reed ; the rela- 
tives of Colonel Petit ; the widow of General Harmar ; the 
sons of Col. Otho Williams ; Gen. C. C. Pinckney and Gen. 
W. R. Davie. He declares that he had "a mass of four 
thousand original letters, written by the hands of all the dis- 
tinguished men " of the period, and that, among them, the 
select letters of Washington, Lafayette, Steuben, Read and 
Greene, beside those which he published, would alone make 
up two interesting volumes. 

At Philadelphia, Justice Johnson was offered by Desilver, 
the publisher, a mass of original materials regarding Greene, 
from which a biography was at that time being made for 
Desilver. A thousand dollars was asked, and the judge re- 
fused. He declares that they were only the vouchers of the 
quartermaster-general's department; and adds, "If ever that 
collection of papers has furnished, or shall furnish, to the 
world, one page of history or biography (unless it be a fac- 
simile page), I shall acknowledge my error in not possessing 
myself of them." This last is a most direct thrust at the 
"Memoirs of the Life and Campaigns of Nathaniel Greene," 
by Charles Caldwell, M. D., Professor of Natural History in 
the University of Pennsylvania, which Desilver published in 
1819. Caldwell's book contained little that had not already 
been printed in Gen. Henry Lee's " Memoirs of the War in 
the Southern Department ;" but it did contain, as a frontis- 
piece, a facsimile of a letter of Greene. Dr. Caldwell de- 
clares in his preface that "the documents and other sources 
from which we have derived our information are as ample 
and authentic as any now existing;" but that this was very 
far from being the case is evident from the pages of Justice 
Johnson's book, as well as from his preface. 

Johnson's two ponderous tomes were published in 1822. 
From this time one hears nothing more of the papers which 
had been committed to his charge until more than forty years 
later. During that time they had passed from the custody 
of Mrs. Shaw, the general's youngest daughter, into that of 
Mr. Phinehas Miller Nightingale, second son of the eldest 

*Ramsay used a manuscript of Pendleton's, written before 1782. See 
his letter in Hist. Magazine, Vol. XI IL, p. 26. 



PAPERS OF MAJOR-GEN. NATHANAEL GREENE. 163 

daughter. In 1846, George Washington Greene, the general's 
grandson, published a short life of his grandfather in Sparks's 
" Library of American Biography," of which it constituted 
the twentieth volume. But that book was written at Rome, 
remote from the manuscript sources for a complete biogra- 
phy. In its preface the author expressed a hope of being 
able later to use those materials in the preparation of an 
ampler work. In 1866, he used a portion of them in prepar- 
ing the pamphlet called " An examination of some state- 
ments concerning Major-Gen. Greene, in the ninth volume of 
Bancroft's History." In the preface to the elaborate life 
which he published in 1867 and in 1871, he says that on his 
return to the United States the Greene papers were entrusted 
to him by Mr. Nightingale, and that they formed a collection 
of over six thousand documents. While in his possession at 
East Greenwich they were at times seen by members of the 
Rhode Island Historical Society, and an effort was made by 
Professor Greene, assisted by Charles Sumner, Charles Butler, 
and James S. Thayer, to have them purchased and printed by 
the government of the United States. They subsequently 
returned to the custody of the heirs in Georgia, and 
were, till lately, in the hands of Mrs. P. M. Nightingale of 
Brunswick, Georgia. In the winter of 1893-94 ^^ effort 
was made by a committee of the Rhode Island Historical 
Society to secure their purchase by the State. In fur- 
therance of this project, a member of the family in Georgia 
drew up from the papers a list or rather an enumeration 
of the letters composing the mass of manuscripts, which 
was forwarded to a member of the committee. It showed 
some 1,900 letters from General Greene, and nearly 2,500 
letters written to him. The former were written to a large 
variety of correspondents, especially concerning the war in 
the Southern States. The latter included fifty-five letters 
from General Washington, forty-seven from Congress and the 
Board of War, forty-six from Lafayette, 116 from General 
Marion, 114 from Col. Henry Lee, sixty-seven from Colonel 
Laurens, sixty-three from Colonel Carrington, fifty-seven from 
Colonel Wadsworth, fifty-seven from General Sumter, forty- 
seven from Gen. Anthony Wayne, forty-three from Gen. Otho 



l64 RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

Williams, thirty-four from General Steuben, twenty-seven 
from General Lincoln, twenty-six from General Kosciuszko, 
and lesser numbers from other Revolutionary commanders, — 
General Weeden, General Pickens, General Varnum, General 
Gist, General Knox, Gen. Wade Hampton, General St. Clair, 
Count d'Estaing, Count Rochambeau, thirty-seven from Cap- 
tain Hamilton, — and on the other side, for instance, thir- 
teen from Howe and one from Cornwallis. More than two 
hundred letters from governors of the various States were 
embraced, including some from Governors Greene and Col- 
lins of Rhode Island, Dickinson and Read of Pennsylvania 
and Delaware, Jefferson and Harrison of Virginia, and larger 
numbers from Rutledge and other governors of southern 
States. One may also mention thirty-four letters to General 
Greene from Robert Morris, six from Gouverneur Morris, 
five from Richard Henry Lee, and seven from the Minister 
of France. 

Rich as this collection was, it was found that the State of 
Rhode Island could certainly not be induced to pay the price 
asked by the present representatives of General Greene, and 
the whole mass of Greene MSS. was, it is understood, sold 
to a dealer in autographs in New York City. 

It may be interesting if some information is added respect- 
ing other papers and letters of General Greene than those 
which are in the hands of his descendants. In the library 
of the Department of State at Washington there are two 
volumes of his letters, extending from July 8, 1776, to August 
22, 1785; two volumes of transcripts of his letters from Oc- 
tober 27, 1780, to November 3, 1783; and five volumes of his 
letters and papers relative to the department of the quarter- 
master-general in 1779 and 1780.* In the library of Congress 
there are letter-books of 1781 and 1782, two volumes.f Cald- 
well, in his preface to the work already mentioned, says : "No 
inconsiderable portion of the materials necessary to complete 
his biography have been lost through the negligence of those 
to whom they were entrusted. In various parts of the coun- 

♦Bulletin of the Bureau of Rolls and Library, Vol. I., pp. 19, 20. 

fWinsor, Narrative and Critical History, Vol. VIII., p. 413; Bancroft, 
Vol. X., p. 7. 



PAPERS OF MAJOR-GEN. NATHANAEL GREENE. 1 65 

try, individuals are known to have been in possession of vol- 
umes of his ofificial letters, some of which no doubt contained 
interesting information on the subject of his campaigns. But, 
on the strictest inquiry, few of these documents are now to 
be found." In view of Caldwell's relations to Desilver, and 
Desilver's relations to Johnson, this has an amusing sound. 
But that Johnson also had not exhausted the material, was 
asserted with much warmth of feeling by Henry Lee, son of 
Gen Henry Lee ("Light-horse Harry"), in his book pub- 
lished in 1824, entitled, "The Campaign of 1781 in the Caro- 
linas ; with Remarks Historical and Critical on Johnson's 
Life of Greene." The book consists of a series of most bitter 
comments on Johnson, who had minimized the importance of 
General Lee's services and the degree of his intimacy with 
General Greene and of Greene's reliance upon him. Johnson 
had said, "The cabinets of all his most intimate friends have 
been open to us, and to us alone." Commenting on this, the 
younger Lee.|Says : " We have the best authority for affirm- 
ing that about five years ago, Mr. Edmund L Lee, of Alexan- 
dria, made application in behalf of Judge Johnson to one of 
the representatives of the late General Lee for the inspection 
of his military papers, and for the use of such as might have 
reference to the life of General Greene. That in reply Mr. 
Lee was assured there were a number of letters from General 
Greene among those papers, which were illustrative and char- 
acteristic, although there was no sketch of his life. That the 
originals would not be given up, but that Judge Johnson was 
welcome to copies. Nothing further was heard on the sub- 
ject, and it is natural to inquire for what cause Judge John- 
son, who appears to have traversed the continent, and even to 
have disinterred the heroic dead in search of materials, should 
have forborne to have availed himself of the opportunity of 
inspecting General Greene's correspondence with an officer 
who is acknowledged to have exhibited 'brilliant military 
talents,' and a ' cordial and devoted attachment to his gen- 
eral.' "* Lee gives several letters which Johnson had declared 

*Lee, p. II. 



l66 RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

to be missing "from the official files," and says that Johnson 
"acknowledges more than one hiatus in his copies of General 
Greene's letters to Lee." Greene and Lee, by the way, con- 
ducted a part of their correspondence in cipher.* 

Sparks collected many letters of Greene. In his diary, in a 
passage published by Dr. Adams,f he says, under date of 
May 15, 1826, writing at Richmond after searches in the State 
capitol, " Many letters from Greene are on the files which I 
have looked over to-day, — some of them written in a vigor- 
ous strain, and indicating not more a great commander than 
a man of high intellectual power and knowledge of mankind. 
I marked several to be copied." Again, in a passage not 
printed, he says, under date of June 7, 1827, at New York: 
" Mr. Ward informed me of papers in his father's possession, 
particularly letters from General Greene. His father is the 
son of Governor Ward of Rhode Island, and holds his papers. 
Mr. Ward mentioned particularly a eulogy on General Greene 
by Hamilton, pronounced before the Cincinnati Society. It 
was never published. Mr. Ward had procured a copy for Mrs, 
Shaw, General Greene's daughter." Next day, June 8, "Mr. 
Ward has in his possession several letters from General 
Greene, written in early life, which I am to consult here- 
after." At a later date he writes, October 12, 1827, Boston: 
"Returned this day from a visit to Providence, to which 
place I have been for the purpose of consulting Mrs. Shaw, 
the daughter of General Greene, respecting her father's 
papers. These belong to Mrs. Shaw. They are now in the 
possession of Judge Johnson, who has had them for the pur- 
pose of writing his Life of General Greene. On Mrs. Shaw's 
return to Charleston, she says she shall reclaim the papers, 
and she manifests the best disposition to afford me every fa- 
cility in consulting them. She will come again to Providence 
in the summer, and she will then probably bring the papers 
with her, and allow me to retain them while I am engaged in 
preparing Washington's Works." At Philadelphia, under 

*Lee, pp. 232, 12, 324, 325. 

t Adams's Sparks, Vol. II., p. 457. 



PAPERS OF MAJOR-GEN. NATHANAEL GREENE. 1 67 

date of February 4, 1831, he notes that there are in the 
library of the American Philosophical Society twelve volumes 
of Greene's manuscripts, covering a period of a year and a 
half. They were in the main simply the papers of the quar- 
termaster-general's department, and seemed to him to contain 
little of value, though after examination he selected a certain 
number to be copied. No doubt these were the papers which 
in 1818 were in the possession of Desilver.* 

A considerable number of letters and copies of letters of 
General Greene are among the Sparks MSS. in the library of 
Harvard University ; others among the Steuben papers in 
the library of the New York Historical Society, and in other 
repositories of Revolutionary correspondence. Peter Force 
collected a number. The Rhode Island Historical Society 
printed some letters of Greene in the volume called "Revolu- 
tionary Correspondence from 1775 to 1782," which formed 
Vol. VI. of their collections. There are some among the pa- 
pers of Gen. Peter Horry of South Carolina (Winsor, VIII. 
458), and one or two have been printed from the manuscripts 
possessed by Nathaniel Paine of Worcester and George 
Brinley. (Hist. Magazine, Vol. XL, pp. 98, 204). 

J. Franklin Jameson. 



*MS. diary of President Sparks. 



l68 RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



NOTES ON LANDSCAPES IN THE PICTURE 
GALLERY. 



NOTES ON LANDSCAPES IN THE PICTURE GALLERY, 

A notice of some of the landscapes in the picture gallery- 
was given in the librarian's report for 1892, and may be found 
in Vol. I. of the quarterly publication, on pages from 66 to 71. 
The landscapes in the picture gallery are as attractive to a 
large class of visitors as the portraits, and undoubtedly serve 
an important purpose in perpetuating a correct knowledge of 
our local history. For these reasons, and to obviate the need 
of personal explanations, these notes are furnished, together 
with two admirably engraved illustrations. All of the land- 
scapes belong to the present century, while several of the 
portraits date far back in the last century. 

I. THE OLD DROP SCENE. 

The largest and the oldest landscape in this cabinet, 
and perhaps the largest in this State, is 21 x 23 feet, 
and occupies the wall of the north end of the audito- 
rium. This picture was the drop scene of the old Providence 
Theatre, and represents a part of the east side of Providence 
as it was eighty-three years ago. When the picture was 
taken it was regarded as a great enterprise, and its exhibition 
proved a great attraction at the theatre for a long period. It 
was painted between 1808 and 18 12, by John Worrall, a noted 
scene-painter of Boston. It was first exhibited on the 8th of 
July, 1812. It was purchased by a committee of this society 
consisting of William E. Richmond and Thomas F. Carpen- 
ter in 1832, when the theatre became the property of the 
corporation of Grace Church. This is the earliest picture, 
though not the best one, of the cove in the possession of the 
society, and it is the only one in which trees constitute an 
important part of the scenery. 



LB N '10 



